Jarrett House North: Virginia

Secrets of Wikipedia research

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:37:53 GMT

Also known as: How on earth did people write encyclopedias before the Internet?

I’ve been a regular editor on Wikipedia for a while now, with a pretty narrow focus on the University of Virginia and related topics. In the process, I’ve found a list of sources that have made the topic much easier, and might be helpful for other fans of the history of the University:

Philip Alexander Bruce’s five volume History of the University of Virginia, covering the period 1819—1919;
Virginius Dabney’s Mr. Jefferson’s University, bringing the history up through 1974;
The full text archives at the University of Virginia Special Collections, including the minutes of the Board of Visitors;
For occasional kicks and giggles, the Cavalier Daily archives from the late 1960s through the early 1970s.
Finally, for obits and other context, the New York Times archives (with other papers thrown in occasionally).

Note that the sources are hosted by the UVA Library, Google Books, and the Internet Archive. Without the efforts of text initiatives like these I don’t think that what is being done on Wikipedia would be possible. I don’t think that I imagined, when I was an intern applying SGML markup to out-of-copyright texts in the University’s Electronic Text Center (since incorporated into the library’s Scholars Lab), that the work would lead here.

RIP, Nora McGillivray

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 17:03:03 GMT

If I don’t want to get morbid and maudlin, I suppose I should stop reading the “In Memoriam” section of the UVA Alumni Magazine. But then I would never know when I was impoverished by the death of a friend or acquaintance.

Today I learned that Nora McGillivray was killed, or killed herself, last September; Nora being Nora, her death was as full of mystery as her life. The painful details are in the link, as are the beginnings of the mystery.

Nora was in my last poetry class, a language poetry class with Tan Lin. She was a careful, quiet writer whom I remember for her grace and her economy of language. I would never have guessed that she was ten years older than I, and I don’t know how many people in the class did either.

It hurts when someone whose words are so much stronger than yours disappears, hurts to think that someone might have lost a battle with depression (though the details are murky and unclear).

I close with an excerpt from her obituary, which is already behind the paywall at the Daily Progress (shame!):

Nora departed on a warm Indian summer night. The details are sketchy and appropriately cryptic, and, while she would have loved being the star of her own cinema verité masterpiece, rest assured, Buckingham County, that Nora is Watching the Detectives...

She was impossible to forget. You had only to meet Nora once to have her indelibly inked upon your subconscious. You might not always have considered this a good thing. She was the kind of dame a tortured young musician would write an opus about, and more than one of them did....

Hillary: Eleventh hour UVA session doesn't help

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:58:08 GMT

Interesting choice of campaign destination for Hillary Clinton on Monday: she spent an hour with Larry Sabato’s PLAP 101 class at the University of Virginia (via the Tin Man). It appears, from last night’s election returns, that it didn’t help, since Obama swept Virginia (and Maryland, and DC) by a healthy margin.

What surprises me a little is the tone of the uncredited article in UVA Today, always the glossiest and least relevant of the on-Grounds publications. It reads like a campaign press release, gushing over how “poised and candid” she sounded.

I have to say I’m not surprised at all by the fact that the University Singers, rather than the Glee Club, got the nod to do the musical accompaniment, though. I can’t imagine a scenario in which this particular candidate would be OK with a men’s chorus accompanying her.

Oh, and the Barack Obama “Sweep” poster is courtesy the Do It Yourself Barack Obama Poster Site, which is based on this fantastic series of posters by Shepard “Andre the Giant has a Posse” Fairey.

The Good Old Song of ... the Virginia Glee Club

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 04:17:55 GMT

Funny what you find when you dig through University archives. I was going through some old Virginia Glee Club photos tonight when I decided it would be a good idea to actually read the lists of names at the bottom. Some familiar names popped out (Ernest Mead, Harry Rogers Pratt), and then one (in an 1893 photo) that sounded familiar but I couldn’t place it. E.A. Craighill…

Then it hit me. Here’s the guy credited with writing the lyrics to “The Good Old Song” between 1893 and 1895—in an 1893 Glee Club photo! The guy who wrote the freakin’ “Good Old Song” was in Club!!!!

Well, I was having trouble filling out the Notable Alumni section of the Glee Club article after Woodrow Wilson… now I’ve found Notable Alum #2.

Revised Glee Club record date: 1951

Tim Jarrett — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 16:27:39 GMT

While doing some Wikipedia related research last night, I stumbled across something interesting. The record album Songs of the University of Virginia, which I’ve long thought was recorded in 1947 based on photographic evidence from the University archives, was apparently not released until 1951. How do I know this? From a 1951 Washington Post article, of all places.

If it seems funny that a Paper of Record would cover goings-on at the University, consider that the WaPo didn’t get that reputation until the time of Woodward and Bernstein. Prior to that, it was viewed as a sleepy society paper, and apparently not above covering the doings down Route 29.

Also interesting in the article was the following: confirmation of the 1871 founding date (the record was said to honor the eightieth anniversary of the founding of the Glee Club); identification of the Beta Chi chapter of Kappa Kappa Psi (the “national honorary band fraternity”) as the sponsor—an organization that, as far as I can tell, isn’t on Grounds any more; and identification of Thomas Jefferson Smith III of McRae, Georgia, as the co-chairman of the project (with Jack Hardy) and president of the Glee Club at that time. Plus, apparently, the Music Department was resident in Minor Hall then, rather than Old Cabell.

But the main point of the article for me was its claim regarding the aim of the project, which I reproduce here in its entirety:

Many songs which should be a part of University heritage have been lost, some because they were set to popular tunes of the times and died out when the tunes were forgotten, some because a college generation is a brief time in the life of the school. Words to these songs can be found in university publications, but no one sings them because the tunes have been lost.

The famous “wah-who-wah” [sic] of the University’s alma mater is an example of these lost songs. Once it was sung; then all the band music for it was lost. Now no one knows the music, and it has become a yell, used chiefly at football games.

So “Songs of the University of Virginia” will preserve songs which otherwise might be lost in future years. The album will help alumni of present and future to recreate the days of “purple shadows” on the lawn.

The irony, of course, is that the album itself faded almost completely into obscurity too. Note the part about wa-hoo-wa—they are referring to the song about which the “Good Old Song” was written (no, the “Good Old Song” is not self-referential!), which is lost.

Documenting a vanishing landscape

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:45:07 GMT

Only natural, I suppose, that my thoughts are drawn to the past this week. A new online image collection at the University of Virginia Library, the Frances Benjamin Johnston Photograph Collection is helping to foster that nostalgia with a series of photos of vernacular Virginia buildings taken between 1929 and 1935. The buildings, ranging from the Tuckahoe mansion to a debtor’s prison, have much of the quiet, slightly shabby grace that still lingered in parts of the Tidewater when I grew up (though increasingly you had to go out to Gloucester or south to Chesapeake to find it—it vanished from the Peninsula a long time ago).

I looked through the list but was only able to find a few buildings that I am directly familiar with. But the names are an evocative litany of the Tidewater and the Piedmont: Abingdon. Apperson Farm. Bowman’s Folly. Bruton Parish. Cabell House. The Glebe. The Hugh Mercer Apothecary Shop. Kempsville. Kenmore. Kittiewan. Landsdowne. Mangohick. Pohick. Mantua. Midlothian Pike. Monticola. Powhatan. Poplar Grove. Rich Neck. Sweet Hall. Warwick. Yancey’s Mill. Yeocomico Church.

Virginiana, Wikipediana

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 17:33:12 GMT

I’ve been expanding my Wikipedia footprint over the past few months. Starting on the Virginia Glee Club page, my contributions now span articles on a few University presidents, the Raven Society, the Virginia Gentlemen, and even the Seven Society. Yes, editing articles on Wikipedia is a gateway drug.

So I made it formal the other day and joined the WikiProject University of Virginia. I don’t know exactly what that means but I suspect I’ll find out soon enough.

I’d welcome help from other University alumni or interested parties regarding any of these topics. For instance, there is damned little about the VGs online to use as reference material for discussion of this 50+ year old a cappella group, and I know they’re more notable than the Hullabahoos, who have a kick-ass article.

Aw crap.

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 04:30:59 GMT

At the half, I said to my wife, “Well, we’re up, but we could always blow it in the second half like we always do.” I should have kept my mouth shut.

It was still a fun game to watch, at least until Jameel Sewell went out with an injury in the fourth quarter. Then it got sloppy fast. But still, I have to remind myself from the perspective of one glass of wine, at least we were in a bowl game, and not one of the low rent ones either. It was a nice end to a season that had its ups and downs.

Two safeties in one game????

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 22:13:55 GMT

I can’t believe what I’m seeing. Virginia now has four points that it scored on safeties off Texas Tech in the endzone. Virginia 18–7. Wahoowa.

Interception and a 96-yard touchdown run

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 21:57:03 GMT

Now that’s a way to start to run up the score—a record-setting run in the Gator Bowl. I might have to start burning some bandwidth and post some Glee Club MP3s—I had to take the ones down that I posted during the VA Tech game because the downloads burned too much bandwidth.

More blogging friends

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 21:22:11 GMT

I find it interesting that so many of my blogging friends are my literary ones. I don’t know why that surprises me, particularly, but it does. Today’s discovery is the multiplex of blogs run by fellow Wahoo (and Mo Hill guy and Lawnie) and now Grinnell professor Erik Simpson: Underlying Logic and Sports Guy Talkin’ Crazy. Hours of entertaining reading.

Glee Club nostalgia trip

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 23:18:50 GMT

Courtesy fellow VMHLB the Tin Man, the other version of the Twelve Days of Christmas, the audience participation version performed by the Virginia Glee Club. Some of the traditions seem to have gone away: there is no “Hens Suck Eggs” chant from the Four Calling Birds, for instance, and the traditional bum-rush of the conductor followed by champagne toast has been replaced by a skit that’s not really visible in the video. But you get some of the spirit of the occasion. And I was excited to see that it happened in Old Cabell Hall; there were some dire predictions about what was going to happen with hall availability this year that appear not to have come fully to fruition.

Enjoy:

Calling out the Shadows

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 16:59:59 GMT

An editorial in the Cavalier Daily, UVA’s student newspaper, yesterday called one of the University’s secret societies on the carpet over past actions. The outcries are getting louder over this society, ranging from allegations of racism to statements that the Shadows were formed to “stop the integration of women into the University, to uphold a dress code, and to maintain the honor system's single sanction.” It’s hard to prove the first two, though I’m anxiously awaiting more Cavalier Daily back issues coming into the UVA Library’s CD archive so I can check out some of the formative stuff that happened from 1963 when they were founded through 1967 when the current archive starts.

But based on reports of interactions between the society and students (and administrators) over the years, the society’s intentions don’t seem particularly benign. The two episodes of failed attempts to call the group to justice through UJC cited in a recent editorial are particularly egregious, especially since one cites breaking and entering on the part of the society (back in 1982). So is the tying shut of the door of the University’s first female Assistant Dean of Students back in the late 1960s or early 1970s.

I think the Purple Shadows aren’t doing themselves any favors by dressing up in Klan robes, either.

I think, like the writer of yesterday’s editorial, that calling on the Shadows to explain themselves and step out of the ... erm, shadows is called for at this point.

Lou Bloomfield, TV star

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 03:30:53 GMT

A quickie for tonight: just saw in my alumni newsletter that Lou Bloomfield, UVA Physics professor famous for his “How Things Work” class and textbook (as well as for developing algorithms to bust plagiarized term papers) is going to be co-hosting the TV show “Some Assembly Required” on the Discovery Channel. Some star professors are born famous, some achieve fame, and some have fame thrust upon them, I suppose. Or thrust themselves upon fame.

Shades of Soering: UVA undergrads arrested for kidnapping

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 20:30:24 GMT

As if the loss to Va Tech wasn’t bad enough, now this: University students charged with abduction (see also WaPo article). This is the definitive proof that curriculum standards at UVA are relaxing; back in my day toolies wouldn’t have had time to go to Northern Virginia, much less to kidnap someone and hold them for ransom!

I note also, with some amusement, that the students managed to find the one sketchy motel in Falls Church in which to keep their victim. The Stratford was just across Rt 7 and a little down the street from the apartments my wife lived in before we got married, so I know the area pretty well. It’s totally the sort of place you’d expect to show up in an episode of Law & Order.

Hat tip to Greg Greene for the initial email alerting me to this development, which also provided the Jens Soering connection (Google him, but make sure to look at some of the results that aren’t actually written by him).

Fun while it lasted

Tim Jarrett — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 23:31:24 GMT

Well fought, Virginia, but in the end we were outmatched. Someday I want to play against Virginia Tech and have enough TDs to post the rest of the tracks from that 1947 album, but not this year.

Now what I want is for Virginia Tech to steamroller Boston College. Why? Because it’ll make a whole lot of people here a lot less smug, and because it would be nice to have an ACC champion in Virginia—even if it’s not in Charlottesville.

Back in reach, 23-21 in the third quarter: “From Rugby Road to Vinegar Hill”

Tim Jarrett — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 22:12:31 GMT

Well, that took a while, but what a series of plays by Virginia! And that was one time that “run it up the middle,” that old George Welsh standby, paid off for the team.

The song for this touchdown is a colorful one, and the 1947 Glee Club omits most of the colorful verses, but you can Google for some of the more fun ones. Can you imagine a student group today cutting a record with the chorus, “I think we need another drink”?

~~From Rugby Road to Vinegar Hill, Virginia Glee Club and the UVA Band - Download 4.6 MB MP3~~

One point lead, 14-13 in the second quarter: “Cavalier Song”

Tim Jarrett — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 20:45:08 GMT

On a couple of nice plays, the score goes 14–13 as Virginia takes the lead. This is the lead off song from the LP reissue of the Songs of the University of Virginia album:

~~Cavalier Song, Virginia Glee Club and UVA Band (1947) - Download 3.7 MB MP3~~

Virginia gets on the board, 10-7 in the first quarter: “Hike, Virginia”

Tim Jarrett — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 20:19:08 GMT

First UVA score of the game with just a few minutes left to go in the first quarter. Here’s another track from that 1947 album in honor of UVA getting on the board: “Hike, Virginia” is another fight song, and it looks like Virginia could use the encouragement.

~~Hike, Virginia, Virginia Glee Club and UVA Band (1947) - Download 1.5 MB MP3~~

Virginia vs. Virginia Tech, with a soundtrack

Tim Jarrett — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 19:50:38 GMT

I need to watch the UVA–Virginia Tech game. Nice that ESPN is already giving the Cavs no respect; we’ll see how it goes. I’m afraid to make a prediction, though; I’ve been wrong too many times before this season.

In honor of the game, here’s a little team spirit from 1947. This is ripped from that LP reissue of the 1947 Virginia Glee Club/University of Virginia Band album, and it’s an MP3 of the 1912 fight song that the Glee Club was still performing when I was there. I’ll post another song each time we get some points on the board.

~~Yell Song, Virginia Glee Club and UVA Band (1947) - Download 1.8 MB MP3~~

Update: The downloads have been temporarily pulled to reduce my bandwidth consumption. Sorry, folks.

G$, author

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 04:38:22 GMT

My good college friend John “G-Money” McLaughlin has finally published his award winning novel, Run in the Fam’ly, and it’s available for purchase. I’ll be stopping by the Harvard Bookstore to pick up my copy.

I wish I could say that I published him first, in Rag & Bone, a long time ago. But John was my fiction editor at the magazine, and we had a rule (after a fairly disastrous first issue) that we didn’t sh*t where we eat—in other words, there would be no submissions from editors published in the magazine.

Surviving the Billy Goat Trail

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 23:53:26 GMT

As mentioned last week, I survived a hike down the Billy Goat Trail (not a surprise given the difficulty of the trail, which was moderate, but more given my general state of fitness).

It was a great hike, made better by the brisk fall air. My calves were really sore by the end thanks to the rocky terrain—even in the “flat” sections, we were walking on the edges of boulders. But there were also points of concern, primarily with the very low level of the river. If there was any question that water is a universal concern this fall, they were erased by my stroll up the Potomac that Saturday morning.

The group as a whole was much more fit than myself, including Jim’s high school friend John Hollinger. (Of Jim’s fitness no doubt is possible.)

I also got a lot of good photos at Jim’s wedding party itself. And by “good” I mean: everyone was presentable, only a few were blurred beyond recognition, and you can’t really tell how much fun we were actually having.

Mothman is married

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 00:04:21 GMT

I had a great weekend, hanging out in DC at my good friend Jim Heaney’s wedding. Jim, known to many as the Mothman, was a fellow Suspicious Cheeselord/housemate/Glee Club alum and remains a good friend. I had a fabulous time meeting Rebecca’s family and reconnecting with friends—Doyle, Vick, Cheeselords, it was good to see all of you again.

In particular, I received the welcome news that the next Cheeselords recording, of unrecorded works of Jean Mouton, will be coming out soon. Having heard the group on Saturday, I can only say that (perhaps fortunately) it’s a completely different sound than when I was there, and I can’t wait to hear how it goes.

And, yes, all survived the hike on Saturday morning. Definitely the only wedding I’ve ever been to where the groom requested a bachelor hike in lieu of a party. Despite my fears of dropping from cardiac arrest, I had a lot of fun. Jim and Rebecca, I can’t wait to hang out with you guys again soon; you throw a heckuva party.

Missing the Glee Club ... for the Glee Club

Tim Jarrett — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 03:35:46 GMT

The Virginia Glee Club will be in Cambridge on November 3, singing with the Wellesley College Choir (repeating a pairing that was done back in 1991 when I was a first year). Unfortunately, I won’t be in the audience at the First Congregational Church to see the group, because (in one of those weird coincidences) another Glee Club member is getting married that day. Yep, Jim Heaney, the Mothman himself, will be tying the knot in DC, and I’ll be there doing whatever a groomsman does (it will actually be my first time participating in the ceremony from that perspective). Should be a reunion of many kinds, as the Suspicious Cheese Lords will be in attendance as well.

Etext no more

Tim Jarrett — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 15:53:56 GMT

The Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia Library, better known to myself and other alumni of the center as Etext, has gone the way of all flesh, kind of. The center’s page announces that its online contents are being migrated to the Digital Collections center of the Library, and that its functions will continue to be performed by the Scholars’ Lab.

It is, I suppose, inevitable. Once cutting edge, now the phrase “electronic text” sounds quaint. And fifteen years on, its original mission—to digitize content, to assist faculty and students with the use of computers in literary scholarship—has become mainstream. But there is something sad about its disappearance. It was there that I learned how to use the Web—we used an SGML compliant doctype for our texts that as I joined the Center were just in the process of being translated to HTML, since Mosaic had just come out. I learned about NeXT there, and Windows, and digitized a few texts along the way. In fact, I was also exposed to Starbucks there for the first time, as one of the staffers brought home some coffee (hi, Peter and Kelly!) from them in the days before their ubiquity.

More than anything, I think I was exposed to a conviction there that ubiquity of searchable access to cultural artifacts could change the world. I think that if I had encountered this attitude sooner, I might not have gone into consulting and the whole arc of my career would be different.

So, a virtual moment of silence for Etext. It served well. And here’s hoping that the appallingly slow performance on the Digital Collections site this morning is just a hiccup.

Songs of the University of Virginia: Liner Notes and Discography

Tim Jarrett — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 03:12:11 GMT

Finally I have a few moments to sit down and transcribe the liner notes from the 1947 edition of the Virginia Glee Club’s album Songs of the University of Virginia.

From Rugby Road to Vinegar Hill, from Cabell Hall to Scott Stadium or Lambeth Field, and back again to the Gymnasium (Fayerweather or Memorial, depending on your vintage!), music and song have always played a lively part in the social life of men of the University of Virginia. Practiced or impromptu, spirited or merely spiritous (or both), music is a part of every Virginia man’s memories of the University. It has always been so.

“Music is the favorite passion of my soul,” wrote Thomas Jefferson, who founded the University in 1819, designed its unique buildings, and drew up its original curriculum—a curriculum which included a plan for a professor of music and reserved a room in the Rotunda for teaching it. Mr. Jefferson was himself a proficient violinist and the collector of an outstanding musical library, and from his University’s opening in 1825 instrumental music and singing were favorite student pastimes. That they were sometimes rowdy and off-key is attested by a faculty ruling of 1831 which prohibited the playing of musical instruments after two in the morning and on Sundays! As early as 1832 there was an informal band composed entirely of students, and by 1835 faculty resolutions were deploring occasional “disorderly singing” amont the young gentlemen.

But there has been all through the years much serious music, too. The Claribel Club, a serenading socety, was started in 1874 and seems to be the first formal musical organization. The Glee, Banjo, and Mandoline Club, organized in 1893, was another of the forerunners of today’s large and well-trained Glee Club and Band. The range of the Glee Club’s repertoire is wide and ambitious and the University Band does far more than furnish colorful backgrounds for athletic events, for its concert programs offer music of a high order.

These two competent and highly-trained University organizations have joined their talents in this album to offer students, alumni, and friends of the University a selection of representative Virginia songs of the present and the recent past. These versions, however, make no claim to be definitive, either in words or melodies. Students and alumni alike may prefer, from sentiment or long familiarity, other versions of some of them.

In this album the Band and the Glee Club have tried to reflect in song the essential spirit of the University in its lighter moods, to evoke again the happy memory of University days (and nights) which, despite the tide of years, still “cheers our hearts and warms our blood.”

The University of Virginia Band is directed by M. Donald MacInnis, the University Glee Club by Stephen D. Tuttle. The music has been arranged by M. D. MacInnis, J. E. Berdahl and S. D. Tuttle with the assistance of members of both organizations.

Glee Club record on 78s

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 22:33:06 GMT

Quick followup to my post about the 1947 Virginia Glee Club album Songs of the University of Virginia: yesterday I scored a copy of the original release. As I surmised, it was originally released on 3 78RPM records in an “album,” or book containing the records in three separate sleeves.

The good news is that the album has liner notes, which I will be transcribing at some point not too far from now. The bad news is that the liner notes don’t clarify either the recording release date (still estimated at 1947 based on the UVA library photo evidence) or the copyright of the record. They also muddy the waters about the origin of the Glee Club, dating it to the 1892 formation of the Glee, Banjo and Madrigal Club rather than to the formation of the original Glee Club in 1871. But it’s more information than we had before, so that’s cool.

Kickoff

Tim Jarrett — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 00:56:45 GMT

So, as I posted on my Facebook account last night, I remember when UVA used to beat other football teams 23–3, not get beaten by that amount. Sigh.

Other traditions: in times past, the first concert of the Virginia Glee Club’s season was called the Kickoff Concert, and the program featured traditional university songs as well as the Glee Club’s normal classical repertoire. Now? Apparently, the Virginia Choral Showcase is the order of the day instead. Sensible in that it makes sure that there isn’t a glut of choral concerts competing for audience, but I bet it limits the groups’ ability to perform bigger works for that first concert. It also eliminates one crucial opportunity for working with visiting choirs.

But then, maybe I'm just biased. Fifteen years ago, I was just getting started as the Vice President of the Glee Club, a position whose chief responsibility then was concert publicity, which for us largely meant posters. So I learned how to design posters. I inherited a big cardboard portfolio of posters with designs that had been used and reused for many years. Most were hand drawn; all had some level of nostalgic meaning. I thought that the posters didn't stand out, and that they didn't project the kind of image that director John Liepold and I thought the group should claim: professional, an important part of the University, fun. The first poster of the year was for the Kickoff Concert. So to replace the hand-drawn image in use for several years prior, I went searching in Special Collections at Alderman Library for old pictures of the football team.

And I found the shot attached to this post, an actual football kick (albeit in practice). I surrounded it with sans serif typography—Franklin Gothic Condensed, letterspaced, a favorite— in homage to a famous Elvis Presley poster of about the same vintage as the photo. It was great. We used it for two seasons while I was there. Then the group moved on to other images and eventually stopped doing Kickoff Concerts.

I found the image again recently while working on a Wikipedia article. It hit me again the same way it did back then, an immediate punch. And I thought about change, and how the immediacy of an image can fool you into thinking that things don't change. But of course they do, and you can change with them or stay out of the way.

Songs of the University of Virginia

Tim Jarrett — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 18:24:03 GMT

Courtesy, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library

My copy of Songs of the University of Virginia, the Virginia Glee Club recording made in 1947 that I bought on eBay, arrived earlier this week. Between work and a million other things, I didn't get a chance to listen to it until Thursday night, when I ripped the record to lossless AAC using my Griffin iMic and Amadeus Pro (see my earlier note on my increasingly unlikely project to rip all my vinyl records for pointers). And it’s a little different than I expected.

First off, some new findings about its pedigree. As I posted earlier, University archives said it was recorded by RCA Victor, but the record cites “Recorded Publications Company” as the label. There is no further information other than an address in New Jersey. I did some Googling, and it seems that this was a not uncommon arrangement. RPC was kind of a vanity vinyl press for small markets like universities, and in at least one other case they published recordings that were actually made by RCA Victor engineers.

There is very little on the record itself to help with additional clues about its provenance—no liner notes or even any text on the back cover, and no date. But a few clues are possible to deduce. First, this record is not the original format that was issued in 1947. There is a scan of the record in a UVA exhibit that shows the label, with only two songs on one side, not the four or five in the current pressing. This is a simple mystery to solve, though: the university archives speak of a “three-record album”—in this case, they apparently mean album as in the original books of 78-RPM discs. This would mean that the first edition had three 78-RPM records in it, which has since been condensed to the current 33 1/3 RPM LP with nine total songs.

The performances themselves? This is a bit of a surprise. For the most part, the Glee Club sings in unison, not harmony, and the band has the harmony lines and the interesting parts of the arrangement. Apparently the a cappella part of the Glee Club’s history lay in the future. And the songs themselves are really interesting too: both verses of the “Good Old Song,” a bunch of now-obscure football songs like “Hike, Virginia”; some less obscure football songs like the “Yell Song” (which was being sung during my Glee Club years; and “Virginia, Hail, All Hail!” which the Glee Club currently pairs with the “Good Old Song” in performances. And then there are the real obscurities: a setting of “Mr. Jefferson’s Favorite Psalm,” the theme songs of Eli Banana and T.I.L.K.A., and a recording of “From Rugby Road to Vinegar Hill” which omits the, um, most colorful verse. Full tracklisting below; as on the record label, the years denote classes of graduation where applicable:

“Cavalier Song” (Lee 1924/Lewis 1925)
“Good Old Song” (Craighill 1895)
“Hike, Virginia” (McVeigh 1907/Crenshaw 1908)
“Psalm Fifteen” (arr. Daniel Purcell)
“Yell Song” (Lehman 1915)
Ribbon Society Songs: “Eli Banana The Starry Banner”
Ribbon Society Songs: “Come Fill Your Glasses Up for T.I.L.K.A.”
“From Rugby Road to Vinegar Hill-Glory, Glory to Virginia-Fill Up Your Old Silver Goblet”
“Virginia, Hail, All Hail” (Morrow 1921)

The next task for this particular Glee Club alum is tracing the copyright of the recording. I can’t help but think that some alums of Mr. Jefferson’s University would be interested in checking out these recordings as CDs or downloads—and if that means that we could help make some extra dough for the group, all the better.

It’s time to play the music, it’s time to light the lights…

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 20:36:09 GMT

…It’s time to wait for the Cavaliers to blow it in the fourth quarter, on NCAA football (tomorrow) night.

Speaking of the Hoos, a UVA undergrad on Facebook told me that the South Lawn project (building new academic buildings over Jefferson Park Avenue and into the parking lot across from New Cabell) has claimed the life of the Glee Club House Annex, also known as Acme Acres (former phone number: AXE-ARCH). Moment of silence. I crashed on scary futons in that house on more than one occasion and designed a fair amount of Glee Club paraphernelia on Tyler’s computer there. I was also exposed to the horrors of Paul Stancil on a sugar high, and Jack Van Impe telling us that the Bible says that the Antichrist is coming from Spain, so watch who the UN puts on the Security Council. Plus “This rotund marmot is not amused.” Sigh.

Virginiabilia

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 16:24:05 GMT

I got a nice score for a collection of Glee Club memorabilia today: I purchased an LP on eBay called Songs of the University of Virginia that was recorded in the late 1940s with the Virginia Glee Club and a University band. I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of the record, as much to clear up the discography as anything else. While the eBay listing gave the record number as RPC 81952 (a listing that doesn’t turn up any other Google hits), an exhibit at the UVA Library cites the record as an RCA Victor recording.

There is a surprising amount of documentary evidence about this session, including the picture to the right (from the University of Virginia Visual History Collection in the Special Collections department of the UVA Library). From the notes on these photos, we know that the disc was recorded under the direction of Donald MacInnis and Stephen Tuttle, and that it was to be released on RCA Victor in 1947. But even here there is some confusion. Another 1947 photo shows the Glee Club with Harry Pratt, who was apparently also a director of the group. So the chronology of directors is a little confused.

This is why I have currently only completed the history of the group through 1915. The documentary evidence for subsequent years, up until the time when the group split off from the Music Department in 1989, is scanty—at least online. I know other records (concert programs and posters, University newspapers) will help to fill in the blanks; since I only get to Charlottesville every four years or so, I may have to get some help to piece the rest of the evidence together.

Famous forbearers

Tim Jarrett — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 13:07:20 GMT

I continue my work on researching the early history of the Virginia Glee Club. Google Books has proved invaluable, both in sourcing the birth year of the group and in providing a reference to a famous alumnus about whose membership I was ignorant: Woodrow Wilson, who sang tenor in the Glee Club during his one year of law school at UVA.

My awe at having found myself among the ranks of presidents is diminished only slightly by my learned contempt of Wilson for his re-institutionalization of segregation in DC when he was president.

This update has been published to Wikipedia, where I am editing the history of the Club.

A teaser: Glee Club past history

Tim Jarrett — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 05:03:17 GMT

I’ve been digging into my archives this weekend, prompted by a contact from an old Glee Club friend. I have quite a few things to scan and post, but that will wait for another time, when I’m not getting ready to fly across country early the next morning.

In the meantime, I’ll post a teaser—a scaled-down section of a scanned photo that is exactly what it looks like: 55 guys from UVA shaking hands with Bill Clinton in 1993. More memorabilia from that day, including a higher res (halftone) of the photo, when I get back.

Back to the Hook

Tim Jarrett — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 17:08:18 GMT

I have an appointment with destiny tonight in Charlottesville, where I am heading to see Tyler Magill get married. And to congratulate Jim Heaney on his engagement. And to hang out with my sister and take some photos. And maybe have a late night Newkie Brown at the Court Square Tavern.

No, I’m not building this up too much. Why do you ask?

Castles and plantations and all sorts of dominions

Tim Jarrett — Sun, 20 May 2007 03:12:51 GMT

A note that a Massachusetts “castle” in the Berkshires is for sale caught my eye today. The Searles Castle is a bonafide antique, at least by Berkshires standards, having been built in 1915. It’s pretty, but there’s no real history there, and I can’t help but hope that some fabulously wealthy magnate picks it up. Great Barrington needs more eccentrics-in-residence.

I have sort of the opposite feeling about Carter’s Grove. When I was in high school, the plantation was still being run as a historical center by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation; it was actually an extra credit trip for us in US History in high school, and I have a few halcyon memories of visits with classmates (hi Andrew, Unchu, Jim, Paul) and family. Of course it also houses one of the oldest graveyards of victims of conflict between Native Americans and English colonists, the remnants of the Martin’s Hundred settlement.

Which makes its being up for sale all the sadder. As of the end of last year, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation decided that defraying its deficit required selling the property. Yesterday I saw an ad in the UVA Alumni Magazine for the site. The sale includes a pretty restrictive covenant that protects the “site's historic, architectural, visual, archeological and environmental resources.” And yet. It’s fairly horrifying thinking of this early gravesite passing into private hands and disappearing from public access.

Hoos for Hokies

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 03:32:43 GMT

(Courtesy Kevin Inman, courtesy Tin Man.)

I think that, today, we are all Hokies.

Awful

Tim Jarrett — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 21:20:08 GMT

CNN: Chief: Gunman kills at least 21 at Virginia Tech. How horrible. While I attended the other Virginia university, I know the Virginia Tech campus pretty well, having gone to a summer program there. I believe we lived at Ambler-Johnston Hall, where the first round of shootings took place.

My heart goes out to those affected.

Chalk another one up to teh Intarweb

Tim Jarrett — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 03:45:15 GMT

Click, but don’t adjust your set: Tyler, Smilin’. Yup, as in the Tyler. Seems he’s gettin’ hitched. I can hardly wait to go down to C-Ville and meet the missus.

And that’s not all: check out Tyler’s bands Bucks and Gallants, Draw the Kitten, Grand Banks…

My Founding Father is better than yours

Tim Jarrett — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 04:27:54 GMT

File under amusing: the debate team of Hamilton College challenged UVA’s Washingotn and Jefferson Societies to a debate over whose Founding Father was coolest.

Heh.

Knowing a few graduated members of the Jeff and the Wash, all I can say is, I hope the Hamilton team is prepared to eat crow. And of course, to drink like fish, since they will undoubtedly be treated to a spectacular display of Virginia hospitality.

But one does wonder where the Hamilton College team expect to find their points of superiority, given that their founding father was allergic to democracy. And who are they calling “plump” anyway? I am especially tempted to speculate about the rent paid by the “tenants of rhetoric” [sic], but we’ll let it slide.

Career mobility: someone asks Ed Ayers the question

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 23:55:57 GMT

It is a logical question, but it surprises me that the Cavalier Daily was the first place to print the question about longtime UVA professor and Dean Ed Ayers’s impending move to the presidency of University of Richmond: is it a destination for Ayers, or a stepping stone?

To his credit, Ayers said to the unnamed student that asked the question that he is “focused on his new job, not looking further down the road.” Still, it’s an interesting thought. Casteen has been at UVA since I was there as an undergrad, in the fall of 1990; seventeen years is a long time in any position.

Wikipedia, Google News Archives, and the Good Old Song

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 05:34:36 GMT

I’ve tagged this as being about Virginia because the subject matter is probably most interesting to those interested in UVA, my alma mater, but some of it is probably of more general interest. So, first things first: the Virginia Glee Club has a stub of a Wikipedia page that needs some help. So I went about to help it. I added a brief paragraph about the origins of the Club as a student group called the Cabell House Men, then went in search of documentation. As it turns out, the Cabell House Men are scarce fellows indeed.

But in digging through Google’s various features, I found the news archives, a front end to the paywalled deep content of a bunch of newspapers that featured some really interesting paydirt on the Club that I called home and that formed me in some significant ways. Among the findings, as gleaned from article summaries since I didn’t feel like spending $30 or $40 in reprints tonight, I learned that the Glee Club

was getting reviews in the Washington Post in 1923;
singing in support of the US purchase of Monticello (somewhat confusingly labeled “a Confederate memorial” in 1912,
performing “coon songs, female impersonations, and mandolin, banjo, and guitar songs,” also in 1912, and
accused of carrying off a chewing gum slot machine in 1894.

So much, and so little, has changed.

Interestingly, I also found reference in Google Books that the Club seemingly disappeared for a few years prior to 1910-1911, which I hadn’t heard before.

And of course, there was that Washington appearance in which Bill Clinton himself gave us a shoutout, on Thomas Jefferson’s 250th anniversary: “I want to begin by offering my compliments to the United States Marine Band and the Virginia Glee Club, who have entertained us so well today...” Read that speech; it’s almost unimaginable coming from the current sitting president, but back then it was so routine as to be almost unnoticed.

Oh yeah, and the Good Old Song? Turns out it’s a meta-alma mater, a song in memory of the real Song of Wa-Hoo-Wah, long vanished, and at least according to this author a racist imitation of a Native American chant that originated at Dartmouth of all places.

Lessons? There’s more online than lives in Google’s main index...

Just don't call him Katie

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 02:49:09 GMT

One day a New York Giant, the next day a Today show correspondent: Virginia star Tiki Barber made a big jump this week into the wacky world of broadcasting. His new position on the Today show as a news correspondent makes him the second high-profile Virginia alum there in recent memory and the first since Katie Couric left to become CBS’s anchor. Which, of course, means that Matt Lauer needs to watch his ass.

Common sense in Virginia?

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 19:35:19 GMT

The Tin Man: Virginia Amendment. Tin Man points to an interesting poll that shows that Virginia voters are much less likely to approve the specific anti-gay-marriage amendment language that will be on the state ballot this fall than they were a year ago when asked about a general defense of marriage amendment.

How to read this? Either Virginians are anti-gay but recognize the threats posed to heterosexual unmarried couples imposed by the proposed amendment, or they find it easy to be bigoted in general terms but reluctant to impose specific anti-gay language. Or maybe people’s minds have changed over the last year. Anyway, a small ray of hope from my home state.

The Academical Potemkin Village?

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 16:32:31 GMT

Tin Man wrote a few weeks back about the planned extensions to Mr. Jefferson’s University. The impetus for Tin Man’s post was a generally good New York Times Magazine article that generally avoided the easy story angles, though there were flavors of architects, both sophisticated and moronic, vs. Virginians both reactionary and preservationist. I was particularly delighted to see the author’s reaction to both Hereford College, though I have to say that Darden is not nearly as grim as he painted it—certainly better than Sloan’s modernist gray architecture. Perhaps the author should have visited Darden during a barbecue. But the description of Hereford College is dead on:

What's the alternative? Many of the university's modernists point admiringly to Hereford College, a complex of undergraduate dorms designed in the 90's by the New York architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien. "There's an engagement with the landscape and a compositional playfulness," says Daniel Bluestone, a professor of architectural history at the university. But I found Hereford, which is home to some 500 students, as depressing as Darden: an off-kilter arrangement of towering brick slabs, their slitlike windows resembling gun ports in World War II pillboxes. Unlike the Lawn, which on that same morning was full of students sunbathing and tossing Frisbees, the quad at Hereford was devoid of any life.

The one point missing from the article, though, was the violence that has been done to the Grounds by other well meaning architects, for example Gilmer Hall and the so-called New Dorms. With that context in mind, it’s kind of understandable that we would be a little cautious.

But I continue to be nervous about the overall layout and how the neighborhood to the south will be affected. I think the Glee Club House is immediately to the south of the circular amphitheatre at the end of the terrace. But the lack of a map overlay of the existing neighborhood, even through the extended images on the Arts and Sciences web site, makes it hard to tell.

Newport News is everywhere

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 04 May 2006 14:54:50 GMT

I keep seeing all these connections to my birthplace. Yesterday morning I was sitting in a terminal in Baltimore, where I had spent Tuesday running around like crazy from one client to another, wrapping up with a panel at the University of Maryland (someday, Craig, I will be in town longer than one day, and then I’ll call), waiting for a 6:45 am flight, and I looked to my right, and there it was: AirTran flying to Newport News.

Then I picked up the in-flight magazine on the plane, sitting in business class (which for a $35 fee has to be the cheapest business class ticket in the industry), and flipped through. And what did I find in the middle? Newport News. Complete with mentions of the Monitor at the Mariner’s Museum; Lee Hall; the Shipyard (of course); and even the Virginia Living Museum (née the Peninsula Nature and Science Center).

And that’s not even to mention the prominent coverage that the Mariner’s Museum gets in recent issues of National Geographic, with the upcoming restoration of the Monitor.

It appears that someone in the city’s Chamber of Commerce is riding the Monitor train into a smart wave of publicity for the city. Good plan. Maybe someone in the City Council will take the cue and turn the city into someplace that I’ll want to visit again, rather than the treeless collection of strip malls it was rapidly becoming when I left 16 years ago.

Weird connections to the news pt. 2: Tony Snow

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 04:04:44 GMT

Who knew that my childhood home in Tidewater Virginia was such a nexus of fate? Last year it was my onetime boss’s spacewalk; today it was Tony Snow, one-time writer for the Virginian Pilot and editor of the editorial page of the Daily Press (my hometown newspaper in Newport News, Virginia), most recently Fox News commentator turned Bush administration press secretary.

And the Daily Press was, if I recall, a bastion of journalistic excellence in the early 1980s when Snow was the editorial page editor. But at least that was when it was an independent newspaper, before the Chicago Tribune buy-out.

Happy belated birthday, Thomas Jefferson

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 16:40:28 GMT

On April 13, 1743, 263 years and one day ago, Thomas Jefferson was born. Rumor has it that it was several days later that a delegation from Fairfax County was the first to call the infant “Mr. Jefferson.”

I have made something of a semiannual practice of observing Mr. Jefferson’s birthday with an assortment of pithy quotes and other reflections (see 2005, 2003), but increasingly the part that strikes the most resonant chord for me is the Jefferson Muzzles awards, given annually on their namesake’s birthday to individuals or organizations who “who in the past year forgot or disregarded Mr. Jefferson’s admonition that freedom of speech ‘cannot be limited without being lost.’” This year there is a podcast of the award ceremony, along with thirteen lucky recipients, including President Bush for the secret wiretaps, the DOJ for abridging the privacy of virtually every web user, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin for proposing that the government take away our choice of viewing and listening material in the name of “decency,” and ten other deserving cases. It should be noted that the Muzzles are no merely liberal mouthpiece: students who heckled Ann Coulter’s speech slamming Cindy Sheehan at the University of Connecticut are awarded a Muzzle, as is a Florida school superintendant who apparently forced the resignation of a teacher for writing an anti-immigration letter to the newspaper.

Anchors aweigh: a Wahoo first

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 20:41:52 GMT

It was announced today that Katie Couric would become the first Wahoo, and the first Lawnie, to anchor a major network evening newscast, moving to become the anchor on CBS Nightly News after 15 years on the Today show. Ms. Couric (College of Arts and Sciences ‘79) would also be the first woman (and the first Yorktown High School cheerleader and TriDelt) to be the solo anchor of a major network evening newscast.

All Virginia-centric spin aside, congrats to Katie, who, if she wasn’t already a Seven, must certainly now be on the list for induction.

(Aside to Aven Tsai, Paul Stancil, Jim Heaney, Scott Norris, and Tyler Magill: if one of you is reading this and have that photo from Monticello with Ms. Couric in the VMHLB cap in 1993, now would be a good time to scan it and send me a copy.)

My favorite Google keywords of the year

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 05:05:26 GMT

Someone came to my blog this afternoon who was searching for katie couric I definitely want Duke [in the Final Four] because I feel sorry for all those kids who couldn't get in to UVA.

Heh.

Did she actually say that? I haven’t watched the Today Show in years, but I might have to start watching again if she actually dropped that little bomb on the air.

Entrepreneurship livin' large

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 18:49:45 GMT

In the We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful category, I was eating lunch at a local diner yesterday and heard a familiar name on the nearby TV, which was tuned to Fox News. I looked up and there was an old college classmate, Lash Fary (yes, that’s his real name), who has started Distinctive Assets, “a Los Angeles-based entertainment marketing and gifting company.” Briefly, Lash, or the Gift Fary as he’s apparently known professionally, is part of the system responsible for getting high-priced merchandise into stars’ hands through the gift bags and baskets distributed at events like the Oscars (this was the context in which he was on Fox News). He’s also written a book, Fabulous Gifts, about the art of gifting well.

And to think he lived next door to me first year. Man, the places people go.

I think Lash’s story is interesting because it illustrates how an individual can carve out a business path by following his bliss. It’s also interesting because of the overall fabulousness level, of course: “the Gift Fary,” indeed.